Stephanie Anne Shelton is celebrating her seventh academic year at The University of Alabama. She is an affiliate faculty member in the Department of Gender and Race Studies and the Gifted Education Program.  Dr. Shelton was a first-generation college student who finished her Ph.D. at The University of Georgia in May 2016, where she also earned graduate certificates in Qualitative Research and Women's Studies.  While at UGA, she taught courses in the Institute for Women's Studies and the Language and Literacy Education Department, including courses emphasizing feminist research methods and field-based teacher education. Prior to UGA, Dr. Shelton taught secondary English Language Arts and Classical Latin at Washington County High School in Sandersville, GA.   Dr. Shelton currently evaluates programmatic efficacy, curriculum, and instruction for the Georgia Governor's Office of Student Achievement's Governor's Honors Program. 

Research Interests

​Dr. Shelton's research is interview and focus-group-based and often incorporates queer and feminist theories into examinations of secondary education.  Previous studies have considered early-career high school teachers' efforts to construct public identities as LGBTQ+ allies and the intersections of sexuality, gender, race, and socioeconomic class in teachers' and students' classroom experiences.  Current research projects include considering teachers' understandings of LGBTQ+ ally identity and ally work in socio-politically conservative school spaces, researchers' reflexivity through interview transcription practices, focus group participants' verbalized membership affiliations, and pedagogical approaches in qualitative methodology courses. 

Publications

Dr. Shelton's publications have appeared in a range of journals, including the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, Qualitative Inquiry, Qualitative Research Journal, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, Teaching and Teacher Education, Sex Education, and Literacy Research: Theory, Method, and Practice, in addition to a variety of book chapters.  Additionally, Dr. Shelton has published four books: Feminism and Intersectionality in Academia: Women's Narratives and Experiences in Higher Education (2018; reprinted in 2020), Narratives of Hope and Grief in Higher Education (2020),  Humanizing Grief in Higher Education: Narratives of Allyship and Hope (2021), and Encyclopedia of Queer Studies in Education​ (2022), and has several other book projects that are in progress. 

Service Activities

At The University of Alabama, Dr. Shelton is the Director of Diversity for the College of Education and a faculty senator and was previously Coordinator of the Educational Research Program. Nationally, Dr. Shelton serves as the Chair of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE)'s Genders and Sexualities Equality Assembly (GSEA), is an Acquisition Editor for the Brill book series Queer Studies in Education, and is the Column Editor for English Journal's "Intersectional LGBTQIA+ Identities." Previously, she has served as Program Co-Chair both for AERA Division D's Section 3: Qualitative Research and for the AERA Queer Studies SIG, Treasurer for the AERA Arts-based Research SIG, the Chair of the AERA Division D Committee on Equity and Inclusion, Secretary/Treasurer of the AERA Queer Studies SIG, Vice Chair of the National Council of Teachers of English's Genders and Sexualities Equality Alliance, Co-Chair of the Literacy Research Association's Gender and Sexualities ICG, and Membership Co-Chair for the AERA Queer Studies SIG.